User blog:Deadcoder/Deadcoder's Reviews: Echoes
Well, let's get this crap overwith. Here's a review of the worst episode of all of Code Lyoko: Echoes. I'd say "enjoy", but this episode has the entertainment value of hemorrhoids. Blah Blah Blah, 0 to 10, cheap shot at melanie tran. =The Review= Before we review the episode itself, here's how I think this episode was made: :Writers room at Moonscoop: the wallpaper is peeling. The writers and storyboarders are at a table with store-brand soda. :Bruno Regeste: Hello everyone. I just got word from Mouscadet. Moonscoop is buying Luxanimation. This means our budget is getting shot like an Argentinian government. We're going to have to make 26 episodes instead of 30 for the last season. :Sophie Decroisette: But we've already scripted everything except the last 7! How are we going to shove everything into 3? :Bruno: Worse than you think. We only have the budget for 2. :Françoise Charpiat: But how are we going to cover the last one? We have no budget! :Everyone: Hmmm :Sophie Decroisette, drinking wine out of stress: You know what? This studio is garbage! They stole our budget to buy a studio which only broadcasts on government subsidized channels and the nosebleed channels in the US. I say screw them. Let's make something so crappy, the studio will never get a decent gig again, and will die like the garbage it is! :Laurent Turner: I refuse to be a part of something so unprofessional. I'm out! :Bruno: Good, we can't afford a decent writer anyway. So let's get the worst idea possible to destroy this shithole of a studio. :Everyone turns their eyes to the worst writer, David Carayon. He's in a rubber suit, strapped to the chair, and his mouth is ducktaped shut to prevent any bad ideas from leaking out. :Alain Serluppus: Doesn't unleashing this violate the geneva convention? :Alain le Dong: Yes, but this is the only way to make something sufficiently crappy. :Bruno Regeste: Forgive us lord, creator of butter, for we know exactly what we're doing. rips the ducktape off Carayon's mouth :Carayon smiles and vomits. The vomit spells words: "make an entire episode of recycled footage, because we haven't done that enough." :Sophie: I'd like to point out this wan't my idea. :Bruno: Let's do it. Lightning strikes in the background. The audio department across the hall plays the theme from dracula. fade to black This may sound like a joke, except I would like to point out: Laurent Turner stopped writing for the show just after season 4 started. And he left in my theory. Just putting that out there. Let's review the crap! We start off with Jeremie, Aelita, Ulrich, and Odd at the table, depressed. The usual despair music is playing. Sissi shows up, acts prissy, bugs ulrich with a tracking device that she shouldn't be able to afford, and leaves. Yumi shows up, and they take the recycled footage to the computer. Sissi reveals that she's tracking Ulrich, because we totally didn't see her bug him, and the last thing we want is suspense. Yumi says some slightly sentimental stuff, and we get a montage of recycled footage and audio, in sepia, because this season didn't have mediocre lighting already. We then get an unrelated flashback series covering all of the major plot points of the series. After this flashback of death and destruction, Jeremie decides not to shut it down. Yumi, being the only sane one, says they should shut it down. Frankly, I agree with her. This machine can warp reality, and could have a headcrash any minute. That's probably a bad combo. Jeremie explains in the next scene that he voted against shutting it down because it's the closest thing he has to a social life. Yumi points out how stupid and wreckless that is. Cue unrelated flashbacks in cliched sepia. Yumi then points out how stupid it is. Cue the gym class where Jim injures himself pointlessly, and more recycled footage. Sissi finds the factory, and more recycled footage. William talks to Yumi after class, pointing out how stupid not shutting down the super computer was. In the factory, the lethal dosages of sepia have poisoned Sissi, and are now driving her insane. Aelita encounters the Aelita options! :0. Act suicidal and/or crazy. :1. Attack it with a long single note of angry music. :2. Have an argument with it. :3. Use Energy Fields. At this point, she's only sort of looking at the menu, and is just hitting 'A' hoping to get through the boring menus. Che chooses to start a fight with the audience, by summoning more recycled footage. In the principal's office, the principal has a rare moment of intelligence, and points out the problems with Odd's terrible pun. Sissi runs into the room, revealing the fact they all put the entire world in danger on numerous occasions. Sissi infodumps the silliest plots of the show in a dense rambling, although she is right in that this school gets attacked by the most ludicrous stuff. I mean, a giant teddy bear? really? Everyone assumes sissi has finally gone crazy, though this much recycled footage and infodumping would do that to anyone, so it's not surprising. Ulrich reveals that Jeremie is going to turn back time for the last time. As the US navy said about turn back time, "Never again". We get another steaming pile of recycled footage, this time with the theme of "satisfy the shippers for Ulumi, because they weren't the ones to cut our budget". Jeremie then does a return in time right before Ulrich and Yumi kiss, just to be a troll. We then get the scene in the cafeteria again. They reconcile with sissi, in one of the stupidest moments in the episode. They agree to be friends. NEVER MIND THAT THEY CUT OFF SISSI WITHOUT EVER GIVING HER A REASON, and she's just going along with this. I'm marking this as the second stupidest point in the episode. They finally shut down the supercomputer, which is surprising, because I always assumed the poor initial design, shoddy repairs, and extreme up-time would be what finally turned that thing off "and blew it up". We then get the goodbye shots. We then have the stupidest part of the episode. The computer glows for a minute, indicating that the system may still be active. How cliche. Review Summary This episode is stupid. It's a freaking clipshow. Code Lyoko is notorious for using excessive recycled footage, and it's offensive and crass for them to make an entire episode of recycled footage. The ending of Sissi's character arc is garbage, and is slapped together, like everything else in this trainwreck of an episode. It was obnoxious to devote an episode to such pointlessness when the show has so unresolved plot threads, such as Aelita's mother, what happened to those robots in Siberia, who else was involved in Project Carthage, did Franz Hopper really die, why did nobody notice when the scientists at those labs all started working on random projects which fitted superweapons rather than research, etc. That was stupid. Overall, I give this episode negative 2 out of 10. This may seem a little extreme, until you remember this: The scale is 0 to 10, where 10 is perfect, and 0 is Melanie Tran's acting. Now, Melanie Tran is a crappy actress, but she has never made anything this pointless and annoying. This episode is worse than Melanie Tran's acting! With that in mind, it deserves a negative score. Now to look at what I would have done. I'm going to assume the other 25 episodes of the season have already been made, and only have an episode to work with. I would have had Aelita driven to suicide from greif, but right before she hangs herself, Jeremie stops her. While the rest of the gang supervises her until they're sure she won't try to kill herself, she gets an email, from her mother. Her mother explains that she's escaped the MIB, and she's going into hiding. She warns that they're being watched, and not to contact her. At the same time, William and Yumi reconcile, since she was the only person who managed to temporarily get him out of XANA's control. Eventually, Aelita slips the gang, and tries to leave the city to find her mom. William stops her. He warns her that her mom is in hiding good enough to evade the MIB, so it's unlikely for her to find her mom, and more likely she'll be captured. She realizes he's right, and the rest of the gang truly accepts William for stopping Aelita. Aelita and Jeremie kiss, and she vows to someday find her mother, and exterminate the MIB for destroying her family. Everyone promises to stick with her as long as they can. Cue credits. Is it perfect? No. But it shows that better things could have been done. Leave your alternate series finale ideas in the comments. On a more serious unrelated note; I would like to thank all of my readers for enjoying my reviews. I would like to ask for a minor form of appreciation. I'm not making a Patreon account. Instead, I would like to ask all of you to, by lawful means only, set aside some money for a medical research group, the Foregen Organization: foregen.org. Foregen is working on researching regenerative medicine for victims of a specific type of non-consensual plastic surgery, that I can't mention on this blog, because of wiki content rules. However, this is a charity that is worthy of help, and I would like you all to try. In leu of donations to support Deadcoder's Reviews, I would like all of my viewers to donate some money to Foregen to aid medical research. Thank you all again for enjoying this review, and I hope it made you think about something. Category:Blog posts Category:Echoes